due to living some 1200 miles from Ann Arbor. So take this request FWIW:

For anyone for whom attending would not be crippling from a financial or temporal standpoint,please do what you can to attend. Now is the time for the collective fanbase to put its money (and time) where its mouth has been for the last two months. Yes, the coaches still patrol the sidelines, but I can think of no better way to show that the invective was directed at the administration, not the players, than to pack Michigan Stadium tomorrow. Wear maize, get there early, watch the pre-game, sing the Victors at the top of your lungs, and be loud as hell.

I have to believe the players themselves would take some inspiration from seeing a nearly-full stadium (especially the student section) during pre-game. Whether that inspiration will be enough to counter the (in)effectiveness of the coaching staff is uncertain, but it's got to be better than a tent stake.

I also have a request for Mr. Hackett (who I'm certain has plenty of time to read the blog this afternoon): This strikes me as the perfect moment to kill the rawk music. Kill it dead. Do it tomorrow. I'm sure you've been attending Michigan games for decades, and you must know how much it changes the experience. If you do nothing else in your interim tenure, this act alone would stake your claim as one of the greatest ADs in history. (That last sentence is /s, but only slightly).

At a holiday party in 2007, a gorup of 4 guys were discussing Miles. Each claimed to have an "inside source" that had revealed what it was Miles did to piss everyone off. Each of these guys is a Michigan alum living in AA with means to have access to/run in the same circles as UM higher-ups and/or AD personnel. Each had a completely different story as to what Miles did. The above-referenced rumor was one of them, but the others were completely unrelated. That particular rumor has certainly bounced around more than others over the years, but IMHO that is as attributable to that rumor's salaciousness as to its potential truthfulness.

I accepted at that point I would never know the real story. If Martin didn't reach out to Miles, there is a very limited group of people (Martin himself, perhaps Carr or MSC) who really know why. Unless you hear it direct from them, I wouldn't put any stock in it. Even if Brian or Bacon wrote a book about it, I'd take the info with a grain of salt unless it was backed with quotes from one or more of that small group, and the source(s) later stood by the quotes. And that ain't gonna happen.

Rumor has it his scalding finish to the season has him focused entirely on prepping for the MLS draft. Don't expect any further appearances in the winged helmet. Obviously, good for him, but a downer for those hoping he might be the answer to our kicking woes on Jan. 1 or beyond.

I agree wholeheartedly. And it did have a significant impact on the game. First, the TD KO return was caused in large part by a low, short kick -- not sure if Hagerup would have done better, but he's been handling KOs the last few weeks for a reason. As soon as he caught the ball on the 15 without a coverage guy in sight, you knew it was trouble. The shanked punt had a big impact as well. All in all, it provided a nice teaching moment for my son (who I had "suspended" during our backyard football game yesterday for, let's just say, unsportsmanlike conduct).

One of the reasons I love Michigan (in addition to being a brainwashed lifelong fan and alum) is that we do things the right way. And it gives me confidence that our AD will make what I believe to be the right decision in retaining RR. In many places (cough, East Lansing, cough), a coach might have felt the need to bow to the UNACCEPTABLE crowd in order to keep his job, or at the very least felt that his AD wouldn't care about the shoddy discipline so long as the product on the field was good. At Michigan, it's the opposite -- I believe the coach knows that letting a player play despite the rules violation would be a bigger black mark in the AD's book than the blowout loss.

Actually saw young Lloyd in person at the soccer game yesterday. If was after the game, and he had that blissful smile on his face that I remember from earlier in the season. It was good to see it again.

Watching this for the umpteenth time, I noticed something about Dorrestein that I didn't in any of the umpteen times I looked at the original picture pages or the non-captioned video. Dorrestein does not get "caught up in the wash" -- he affirmatively releases from the DE and turns toward the playside guys that are being pushed toward him (about 2:05). Almost like he was coached to do it. This struck me as odd, given that we've seen Omameh and Lewan repeatedly hopping on such donkeys and whipping them senseless. I never knew nothin' about OL play, but isn't the fix for this to simply continue pushing the guy in the general direction he wants to go, i.e., angled downfield? If Dorrestein had done so, the guy wouldn't have gotten to the play side either (a) as quickly or (b) only 7 yards downfield or (c) possibly not at all if Dorrestein had enough push and knocked him off his feet. Denard would've been well to the outside and presumably beyond his reach by that point.

Another difference (and the reason I don't think it would've mattered which slot was in on play 1) -- in play 1, he's immediately dropping into his deep half, which gives him the time and depth he needs to avoid the block and catch Denard on the angle. In play 2, he actually steps forward on the snap, so when he starts on his angle he gets caught up in the wash. I wonder if he got bitched out on play 1 for bailing so quick and thus being unable to catch Denard until 40 yards downfield, so when play 2 came up he's thinking, "Oh man, I gotta get upfield ASAP!"

Also, Te'o was blitzing on play 1, which meant that Omameh had to take him at the LOS, rather than getting on him five yards downfield and pushing him back.

Interesting how he says he can't protect Crist more, and has to keep the zone read in the play call rotation, "because of the spread offense." I'm sure there's a segment of the domer population spouting off about how real coaches adapt their scheme to fit their personnel. Particularly since I'm fairly certain that Crist's injury happened on a zone read keeper (he got mashed in the right side of the head by (I think) Mouton at the end of the play). Hopefully, that segment is more powerful than the similar subset of Michigan fans, and Kelly gets run out of town before he gets a chance to get his own Denard coached up and on the field.

I'm thinking back on the last two games, and I don't remember a single pass in which I said, "Whew, we're lucky that wasn't picked off." Seems like his incompletions have either been drops, throwaways, or killing Roy Roundtree. I attribute it to the coaching -- they are either drawing up plays in which there is always a first or second read that cannot be doubled, or Denard is uber-prepared for these coverages through film work, or Denard has been drilled so thoroughly on ball security that he will always take off rather than try to force it in.

That quote is attributed to none other than George W. Bush. How the heck did he know about Tacopants before any of the rest of us did? I mean, I'm sure Cheney and Rove had know about Tacopants since the late seventies, and there's that photo of Rumsfield shaking hands with Tacopants in that grainy circa 1981, but I'm impressed that Bush was in on it, too.

I am so sick of coming to this board the Monday after a big win and what do we get? Another transfer!?! How many of these guys is RR going to run off before we're left with Denard, Molk, and 18 guys who aspire to be Kovacs? But then again, having re-read the original post, I see there's no link. What's your source, OP (or should I say, Melanie Collins)? Have you actually talked to Taco? I won't believe Taco's really gone until TomVH has gotten confirmation from Taco's dad (first name Nacho, I believe -- or is that our new OL recruit? Tough to keep it all straight).

Consider my Sparty bro-in-law. I couldn't watch the game live, so had my phone off for radio silence purposes. After I watched the game last night, I turned my phone back on. There's a text from the aforementioned SBIL, to the effect of "look at the Heisman candidate caving like a little girl at the first sign of adversity!!" I'm not sure what prompted the text -- it came in about 5 pm, and I didn't go back to try to figure out what play he was talking about. In all events, I happily replied, asking him if he cared to issue a retraction. To his credit, he acknowledged that he had a large helping of crow on his plate.

Came immediately to mind -- my 13-year-old still says he was sure I was going to throw him down the stands in excitement when Thompson scored. Same game also saw BG's big hit in the red zone. Also, Warren had the game-clinching pick against Indiana last year (how's that gum, Lynch?).

Thanks as always for the work. Two nitpicks -- in your substitution intro, you mention Mike Williams coming in. Perhaps you had the duck/juice thing on your brain, but don't you mean Mike Jones? Second, I think Obi deserved more credit on the fumble recovery -- he took on two blockers (allowing Floyd to be a free hitter), but still did not get knocked off his feet, which ultimately meant he was in position to make the recovery.